Many textile manufacturing operations produce side trims of textile webs, such as nonwoven textile webs used for bedding products. These side trims are often of first quality nonwoven textile material, such as polyester or polypropylene. However, these side trims are typically not sufficiently wide to be readily used for other textile products. For example, a side trim less than about 60 inches has a relatively low commercial value, while side trims in the 30 to 40 inch range are quite commonly produced and available, yet which also have relatively little commercial value. Typical bedding product related applications use textile fabrics having widths in the range of 86 to 104 inches, with 96 inches being a common commercially desired width. Accordingly, the relatively narrow side trims are often disposed of as waste at an additional expense to the manufacturer.
Various efforts have been attempted to join or otherwise connect two or more such side trims into a textile fabric having a sufficiently large width to be useful in forming bedding products, such as a backing for a mattress cover. A mattress cover typically includes a nonwoven textile fabric as the backing, an overlying layer of fiberfill, and an outer fabric layer or ticking. The backing layer simply serves to permit quilting of the ticking and fiberfill together to form an integral unit.
Referring to FIGS. 1-3, a prior attempt by the inventor of the present invention is explained, wherein the inventor joined together three side trims, or textile webs 21, 22 and 23, to form a wider textile fabric using a heat calendaring apparatus 20 (FIG. 1). More particularly, side edges of adjacent textile webs were overlapped several inches and heated under pressure by suitable heating means, such as a pair of heated calender rolls 27, to form overlapping seams or joints 26, thereby joining the adjacent webs together.
Unfortunately, the overlapped joints 26 represented essentially a double thickness of material which, when arranged in the plurality of convolute wound layers, tended to form bulges in the convolute roll of the textile fabric 25. Moreover, these bulges introduced biases into the textile fabric which could not be readily removed upon unwinding of the fabric from the roll and thereby rendered the biased textile fabric unsuitable for many potential applications, including the backing layer for a mattress cover. In addition, polypropylene, a common nonwoven textile material, could not be used in the heat calendaring process.